National review
Arkansas Governor: Trump supporters’ vaccine delay is based on “natural opposition to the government.”
Arkansas Republican Asa Hutchinson said Sunday that the hesitation on the vaccine among supporters of former President Trump was the result of “natural opposition to the government” and called reluctance to receive the vaccine “worrying”. Regarding CNN’s State of the Union, host Dana Bash asked Hutchinson what he thought is causing the hesitation among Trump voters, noting that half of the 45th President’s supporters said they were not receiving a coronavirus vaccine. “Well, I’ve thought about it a lot and I think it’s natural resistance to the government and skepticism about it,” Hutchinson said. “But you see the breadth of support for President Trump here in Arkansas, and you have country voters, you have minority voters, and your hesitation is worrying not just here but across the country.” “And I assume that as a country we will get the vaccination rate of the population of 50 percent, but it will be harder for us to get from 50 percent to 70 percent and the point is to overcome the skepticism,” he added added. As National Review’s Jim Geraghty noted earlier this week, a recent survey by NPR / PBS NewsHour / Marist found that nearly half of Republican men said they would not get vaccinated if they were given a vaccine, which also showed 24 Percent of self-identified Republicans that 20 percent of self-identified Republican men had already received the vaccine. “Self-identified Republican men made up 13 percent of the sample,” writes Geraghty. “So if a little less than half of that population actually turns down the vaccine when it’s offered, we’re seeing 6 to 7 percent of the total adult population.” When asked if Trump should be more proactive in encouraging his supporters to get the vaccine, Hutchinson said he was “pleased” that the president recently hinted that his supporters should get the vaccine. While Trump did not participate in a public announcement with other former US presidents encouraging Americans to vaccinate, Trump endorsed vaccination in an interview last week. “I don’t know why he wasn’t in the PSA with the other presidents,” said Hutchinson. “Every message is helpful and I think we need to have our leaders, we need to have athletes, we need to have different representatives of our community, including our political leaders [the] Vaccine is important. “Hutchinson also reiterated his plans to lift his state’s mask mandate by the end of March. He defended the decision to Bash, who asked why the mandate would be lifted, given evidence showing the effectiveness of mask use in containing the spread of the virus “We are a year this year and we know so much more today than we did a year ago,” he said. “And so we had to inform people about the importance of the mask, and I assume that people will Continue to use the mask if you cannot safely remove yourself, although we are removing the mask mandate. “
